Welcome to the Skeleton Crew! A collection of odd trinkets of Technical Know How, Gaming Goodies, Weird Science, Carnal Knowledge and Various Resources, that I have stumbled upon in my journeys through cyberspace.

Now-a-days we all have them. Tiny USB thumb drives which have replaced the floppy. Most computers don't even have a floppy drive any more and for good reason. Portable flash drives hold more, are more robust, and have come way down in price as flash memory gets cheaper to manufacture. Here is a list of free applications that will fit onto a flash drive:

1.) Portable Firefox 1.0.4renders most sites exactly as it does when installed on your hard drive, but Java applets will run only if Java (which will work only if it finds settings already specified in the registry) is installed on the host machine.

2.) FileZilla 2.2.14bFor FTP and Secure FTP, FileZilla lets you choose between a secure mode that never stores passwords and a less-secure mode that stores passwords in an XML file on your thumb drive.

3.) Trillian Basic 3.1The free Trillian Basic 3.1 instant messaging client works with AIM, ICQ, MSN, and Yahoo! Messenger, but it isn't designed to be run from a portable drive. The third-party Trillian Anywhere Web site provides simple instructions for setting up Trillian on your hard drive, creating all its settings, and then transferring it to a USB drive. The result is a trouble-free universal IM client that leaves no traces on the host computer.

4.) Open OfficeThe free open source office suite; you can choose between a stable 1.1.4 version and a faster and slicker 2.0 Alpha version. The 2.0 version fills 127MB, so you'll need a generous-size USB drive, but it guarantees you a full-featured productivity suite compatible with Microsoft Office wherever you plug in the drive. You may need to click through the license agreement on each new host machine, but that's a minimal inconvenience.

5.) XMPlay and CoolPlayerXMPlay, a miniature but high-powered media player. It has the tiny, overelaborate interface typical of freeware media players, but with downloadable skins that can slightly improve it. Alternatively, consider CoolPlayer, a compact open-source MP3 player that can be extended via plug-ins to handle almost any current media format.

6.) AntiVir PersonalEdition ClassicA virus scanner,that checks the full range of viruses found in the wild which can be installed to your USB drive and run from any host computer.

7.) Avert StingerA reduced antivirus program that takes up less space and that focuses on a few high-risk attacks.

9.) Windows CEYou don't need to carry a PDA to use the Windows CE operating system and its small-screen versions of IE and Windows Messenger. Just follow the instructions on Steve Makofsky's weblog to learn how to download Microsoft's free Windows CE emulator to your USB drive and use a batch file to launch the emulator and save its settings on the same drive. Make sure to read all the comments posted on the weblog to find essential modifications to the method described in the initial post.After you run the emulator for the first time, it restarts instantly with the browser or IM client already open and ready for action if you left them open earlier. You don't get an e-mail client or Firefox's powerful browsing, but nothing else on a USB drive gives you the same instant-on convenience, and you'll need only 32MB for the whole package.

10.) Damn Small Linuxbased on the popular "live CD" Knoppix distribution, and includes Firefox, Thunderbird, and other open-source applications. All settings are stored inside the files used by the Linux systemYou can find other USB compatible apps from many software manufactuers online. For a list of some of them, click here.

Well we all know that DVD Shrink, one of the most popular open source DVD ripping programs, is no more. The program's development was halted and taken offline, although you can still find it around, if you look hard enough. ShrinkTo5 is the new, powerful and fast DVD copying engine on the block. ShrinkTo5 has been developed as a cross-platform engine available for free for anyone. It will even decrypt CSS if you have the appropriate .Dll file installed.

Check it out here, they are also working on Mac and Linux versions, which should be out soon.

Okay once in awhile I come across some kewl ways to snag free stuff off the net. Here is a little tutorial on how to download Music videos off of Yahoo's Launch service for free using a popular open source utility known as VLC. They allow you to play the videos for free without signing up for anything which is very kewl, and this lets you download them right to your hard drive with no commercials.

1.) Get yourself a copy of VLC, if you don't already have it. You can get the latest version here.

3.) In the ‘Stream Output’ > ‘Output methods’ preferences, check the ‘File’‘Dump raw output’ box. Next use the ‘Browse’ option to name the file and choose a save path. Click ‘OK’ to return to the previous preference window. Click ‘OK’ once more and VLC will begin downloading the raw file. VLC will look like it’s playing a file. The progress bar which usually shows play time will actually display the download progress. Because we’re downloading the raw output, you’ll need to add the appropriate file extension. Since Yahoo Music uses the .wmv file format, add the .wmv extension to the raw file so you can view the complete 320 x 240 music video in VLC… Or WMP.

Okay guys I just read a review on this neat little mp3 player called the mobiBlu that they are selling at Walmart for $129.00 bucks. I think it gives Apple's iPod shuffle a run for its money. This thing is stylish, very compact and has many of the features I wanted to see in the iPod shuffle when it was launched:

OLED Display

1 GB of storage

WMA (Digital Rights Management)

FM Radio Receiver and Recorder

USB 2.0 FLASH DRIVE

Voice Recorder

Five Preset EQ modes plus one User-Set EQ mode

File Navigation System and Unlimited Folder Capacity

Easy & Convenient Clock

Built-In Lithium-Ion Battery

Resume Function

Firmware Upgradeable

You can buy one here. I know what I am getting for a stocking stuffer ;)

Here is a little tip for all you travelers out there. It seems you can often obtain a last minute flight cheaper if you book the plane ticket with a hotel room. Even if you donÂt need nor plan to use a hotel room, it is still a better deal for some reason. So the next time you are looking for flights on the popular travel sites such as: Travelocity, Orbitz, Hotels.com, etc, try it with or without a hotel room and see if it makes a difference. Oh and invite me along, I need a vacation ;)

What's an ROV you ask? ROV stands for remotely Operated Vehicle. It is based on the commercially available Sea Fox submersible, but costs allot less ;) This is a pretty kewl project, and if I had a boat or lived near the water I would definitely build one. Who knows, I may discover the next Titanic :) Okay maybe not, but it would be fun to mess around with and get some good video footage of a pond, lake or ocean near you.

Sunday, August 21, 2005

We all know that the majority of websites on the net now ask for your email address, just to download a file or view specific content. This is not only annoying, but it can also lead to a ton of unwanted Junk mail in our inboxes. One solution is to use a disposible email address. Jetable is one such service that provides this. To avoid spam, jetable.org provides you with a temporary email address. As soon as it is created, all the emails sent to this address are forwarded to your actual email address. Your antispam address will be deactivated after the lifespan you selected comes to its end.

Okay so all you Mac users out there don't feel left out by my recent post of Windows freeware applications, here are some freeware programs for the OSX platform. Now go out and load that rotten apple up with goodies ;)Security

1.ClamXav - Antivirus (so that a virus is not transmitted to windows users)Internet

Although I mostly post High Tech articles and know-how on the blog. I also like anything interesting related to the outdoors or how-to stuff from the past. Here is an article I came across, that shows you how to take a piece of ice and shape it into a sphere to make a solar lens, which by the way is capable of starting a fire. A similar technique can be acheived from water that is housed in a plastic bag or saranwrap. Who knew ;) So the next time you are lost in the woods, or forgot your matches at the family picnic and need to start the grill, remember these techniques.

Friday, August 19, 2005

We have all done it. Had a big house party or picnic and left out some soda without tightening the cap. Well, as we all know, soda will not last long that way and goes flat quickly. If you have been tossing the flat cola out, here are some tips to allow you to recycle it in the kitchen.

1)Make a Cake This easy sheet cake is wonderfully decadent and rich. The cola enhances the flavor of the chocolate without adding cola flavor. Loaded with chocolate chips, you can use your favorite chocolate frosting or sprinkle liberally with powdered sugar.More: Coca-Cola Chocolate Chip Cake Recipe

2)Make a 7-bone roast 7-bone roasts are one of the few remaining beef values these days, economical and flavorful. You won't taste cola, but the gravy is to die for! Oven-baked pot roast and vegetables is enhanced by a rich gravy. Can also be made in a slow cooker.More: Coca-Cola 7-Bone Roast Recipe

3)Make a ham Southern ham cooked in cola must be tried to be believed. Bone-in ham is first boiled in cola with an onion, then baked in a glaze of mustard, molasses, and cloves.More: Ham in Coca-Cola Recipe

4)Make a barbecued pork sandwich Start with boneless center cut pork loin or pork shoulder and marinate for a day in a mixture of cola, Worcestershire, vinegar, and garlic. Then slow-roast about 3 hours with a cola and Jack Daniels sauce for utterly delicious pulled pork sandwiches. Try this with different sodas, such as root beer and cherry or use brisket instead of pork.More: Pulled Pork Sandwich with Jack and Coke BBQ Sauce Recipe

5)Make a molded salad Perfect for Thanksgiving, potlucks, or family dinners, make this in a pretty molded shape for extra pizzazz. The salad uses cranberry sauce, gelatin, pineapple, nuts, and cream cheese for a rich texture. Goes together quickly.More: Cranberry Soda Molded Salad Recipe

7)Make a sweet and sour brisket Cola in the sauce helps tenderize brisket. Flavoring ingredients include onion, fresh ginger, garlic, Dijon mustard, red wine, honey, vinegar, soy sauce, and cloves. Ginger ale may be substituted for the cola. Make the brisket the day before and reheat for best flavor.More: Brisket in Sweet and Sour Sauce Recipe

8)Make a prime rib roast Plan a day ahead to marinate this roast in a mixture of olive oil, cherry cola, Worcestershire sauce, oregano, thyme, onion powder, garlic, and a special Greek seasoning blend before grilling and smoking.More: Prime Rib in Cherry Coke Recipe

10)Make a baked brisket Cola not only tenderizes this brisket, it also makes a fabulous gravy. Requires no marination, but plan on up to three hours of cooking time to cook the brisket.More: Coke Brisket Recipe

Here is a great site that caters to the inner child in all of us. It brings back the memories of yester year, when I used to make prank calls to the local Pizza place. The website features one liners and celebrity voices from famous people in various movies. These are great for use in making crank calls and just messing with your friends. It's all in the timing.

Wonder where all that unclaimed stolen or seized merchandise ends up. Well there are tons of items just sitting in police evidence rooms. Now there is a website that gets rid of all of it, in the form of a police auction. There are numerous categories of goodies and some items can be snatched up for a mere dollar.

We all know how lovely it is using windows, and how easy Microsoft makes it to find certain applications and interfaces to manage your system. well here is a list of System applications that most people have no clue even exist.

To run any of these apps go to Start > Run and type the executable name (ie charmap).

So you have built that new PC or bought one recently and need some software to get yourself started. Well here are some really great free applications you can download that will help ya out. They are categorized by type and are just as good if not better than some of their commercial counterparts.

Tuesday, August 09, 2005

CVS (http://www.cvs.com) has released a "One Time Use Camcorder" in which you can buy from them for around $30. It records 20-25mins of 320x240 divx compressed video. The catch is you have to return it to the CVS store to have them retrieve the video and put it on a CD/DVD for you. They then keep the camcorder, refresh it and put it back on the shelf for another customer to use. Well I am going to show you how to easily create a Camcorder Dock that will allow you to keep your $30 camcorder, and download your movies!

You will need the following parts:

1) CVS One-Time-Use CamcorderYou will need to go to your local CVS store to pick one up. You can use this store locator to find you nearest one. If you dont have one locally, you can always try our forums to see if anyone will pick you up one. (and then there is always ebay) The camcorder will cost you around $30 but if you sign up for their "buyers card" you can save $5 plus there may be a coupon floating around here or there for another $5 off.. Regardless, this thing is worth way more than $30, so give CVS a break. =)

1) PalmIII sync cradleTo be honest, this was the hardest thing for me to find. I went to Microcenter, Best Buy, Circuit City, CompUSA, Office Max, and Office depot and could not find one! Then went to the DAV, Goodwill, Salvation Army, Dollar Store, and Big Lots hoping I could find one.. I tell you I couldnt believe how hard it was to find! Well of course there were plenty on ebay, but I didnt want to wait for shipping, so I tried emailing all my geeky friends as well as put a post out on Freecycle. Luckily there was a kind soul on Freecycle who had a spare and GAVE IT TOO ME! If you are reading this, Thank you! Literary millions of people will be looking at your cradle! =)

1) Usb cable that you dont care about.You will need a spare USB cable that you will cut. This could be off an old mouse/keyboard that doesnt work anymore, or just a spare USB cable that you have laying around. It will need to be a "Standard A Type" USB connector. (the type that you plug INTO your computer)

MISCYou will also need assorted small screwdrivers, a soldering iron, solder, solder wick, and gorilla glue. (or other superglue) You will also need some software, but I will get to that later in the article.

If windows is making you mental and what day isn't it ;) Here is a free tech support website for ya. Post your question to the site's two dozen forums or search more than 300,000 threads to find an answer. It's not as fast as a call to tech support, but it can be more fruitful and less frustrating.

Ever want to tell your friend something, but you don't want to hurt their feelings or perhaps give someone a hint that they are a total assclown ;) Well now you can by sending them an anonymous email using Sharpmail. You can send your message in plain text or HTML, or you can send an SMS message to someone's cell phone. (But don't even think about sending abusive or spammish mail, or Sharpmail will pull your free account.)

Ever want to go back in time. Well now you can, sorta. This website stores 40 billion web pages archived from 1996 to a few months ago. It is very kewl to see your favorite company's website and how cheesy web pages were in the infancy of the net.

wikiHow is a collaborative writing project to build the world's largest how-to manual. With your contributions, we can create a free resource that helps people by offering clear, concise solutions to the problems of everyday life. Please join us by writing a new page, or editing a page that someone else has started.

When I was a younging and growing up in the early computer age we didn't have the lovely internet as we know it now. There were however things called BBS's and they were a wealth of knowledge. They had numerous text files on everything from Hacking and Modding to Phreaking, and computer know how. Well when the BBS disappeared so did allot of this knowledge. This site is an archive of all that information.

Okay for all you die hard gamers out there, here is a little link that offers a bunch of free Multiplayer games that can be played online. They have several types of games in different categories. Here are a couple of them:

Adventure QuestA 2D anime themed RPG Game. Runs in your web browser. Large community of players. This game takes a different approach from the usual, and is worth checking out.Free, with option to pay for additional features.Check it out here.

Air Attack3D flight combat simulator.Free to play indefinitely.Check it out here.

Allegiance"Tired of mindless shooters? Welcome to the multiplayer space combat simulation where teamwork is king!"Free to play indefinitely.Check it out here.

America's Army"A thrilling first-person action game. Become a member of the world's premier land force; trained and equipped to achieve decisive victory�anywhere. Earn the right to call yourself a Soldier, letting the enemies of freedom know that America's Army has arrived..."Free to play indefinitely.Check it out here.

Area00"Take off in one of 30 military planes all with actual specs! Take off in a F-22 and fly against human flyers for the ultimate challenge!"Free to play indefinitely.Check it out here.

Artifact"Artifact is the Multi-Player, Persistent World, Real-Time Strategy game from Samu Games. Build an empire from a single city. Search the world for the Ancient Artifacts and claim them for your own. Then do your best to hold on to them to win the game. Finding is only half the battle... "Free, with option to pay for additional features.Check it out here.

What are Warez?? Well Warez is a term for computer software and there are a ton of programs online just ready to be found using my favorite search engine Google :) More specifically Google China. We all know how to find a serial number or patch for our favorite application, but it is often harder to find the full retail version most times. Here are the steps:

It's okay if you don't read chinese. You just have to know some keywords to download the files successfully.

2. Key in the software name you want to download in the search field. And remember to check the following option. It tells Google to look for China only web sites (distinguished by the use of simplified chinese only characters).

3. Now, look for the following highlighted keywords:

don't worry if you don't understand what the heck they mean. The words highlighted in yellow mean "cracked version", and the words in green mean "download".

4. Follow the links. Now you will see more chinese characters! Don't worry though, their layouts are typically the same. Now keep looking for the green keywords above, they should be at the bottom of the page, or the row of the table that describes the software. You can usually get to know their ratings too. Talk about professional warez!

5. That's it!

There is absolutely no magic or advanced techniques to be used here. The root of the problem is, China has way too many warez sites run by individuals, and Google is so far still crawling and indexing them. The high number of warez sites makes Google to usually return links to warez sites on the first page of the results, some even get to ranked first. And of course, this technique can be used with Google Russia too.

The table of translations you might find useful. Of course, do not hesitate to use some online translation tools like Babelfish.

Tuesday, August 02, 2005

To make an extremly cheap taser all you need to do is take apart a disposable camera and keep the green card. then put a wire on the little metal part that sticks out next to the capacitor (the black thing), and put another wire somewere else (just about anywere will do as long as it touches metal). also the two wires that connect capacitor to the rest of the camera are quite good. To charge the taser just press the button that charges the fla#*@! is a good idea to put tape over the rest of the taser so you don’t shock yourself. This taser won’t be anywere near as good as a professional one but it works.

Okay we have all been in a hurry and waiting for the elevator at one time or another. It is no fun nor time well spent, especially if you are in a hurry. What if we could take control of the elevator and own it for awhile. Well here is a little article that will show you how to hack an elevator and do just that.

A River Runs Through it, Good Will Hunting, The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings Trilogy, War Games, 2001 Space Odyssey, Blade Runner, Star Wars, Alien, Sneakers, The Matrix, The Last Starfighter, Tron, I,Robot, The Bridges of Madison County, The Notebook, Saving Private Ryan, The Big Red One, The Shawshank Redemption, Pulp Fiction, Apocalypse Now, The Good the Bad & The Ugly, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Breakfast Club

Spycraft, The Art of War, The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, The Men With Green Faces, A River Runs Thru It, Lord of the Flies, The Singularity Is Near, The History of Video Games, The Fugitive Game: Online With Kevin Mitnick, I, Robot, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, V for Vendetta, The Stand, The Martian Chronicles, Dungeon Masters Guide